Apr
01
2005
52 Books in 52 Weeks, 2005
Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
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Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules ed. David Sedaris
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Publisher: Simon & Schuster
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Year: 2005
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Pages: 352
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In Brief: A collection of the editor’s favorite short fiction of all time strikes me as something of a dud, but it could be that my bias is getting away from me, as I don’t particularly care for short story collections. I’m sure it’s all quality stuff, so you might want to be the judge.
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№61
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Model Patient by Karen Duffy
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Publisher: William Morrow
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Year: 2000
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Pages: 272
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In Brief: Model/actress-turned CNS-sarcoidosis sufferer tells all in a thin memoir that turns out to be passable, if somewhat effete. Duffy’s decision to focus more on her joie de vivre rather than the gruesome details of her illness is admirable, but let’s face it: people don’t read these sorts of books for anecdotes about your apartment. They read them for morbidity’s sake.
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№62
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Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim by David Sedaris
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Publisher: Back Bay Books
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Year: 2005
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Pages: 272
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In Brief: Quietly funny and viciously poignant collection of stories/essays by David Sedaris is part kitsch, part satire, part memoir, part column. A pleasant if not spellbinding read.
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№63
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The Search by John Battelle
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Publisher: Portfolio Hardcover
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Year: 2005
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Pages: 320
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In Brief: Ostensibly about search in general and its effect on the web and on culture itself, this Google-centric book was remarkably well-written, balancing technical parts with a fluid writing style. The focus shifts pretty jerkily between heady, long-term forcasting and current, tabloid minutiæ, but not so much as to ruin to book.
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№64
Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
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Did you raid my bookshelf? Because if you haven’t yet, I’ve got the Russel book and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
Yeah, that’s where I got them from. I’ll also probably read the philosophy of the Matrix book.
hi, found this site searching something on google, but aynways, ive read a book on the philosophy of the matrix, and if youre talking about the same one, it wasn’t very good. Some good points in teh beginning, but the rest of the book is really repetitive.
anyways, cool site
[...] Following the lead of Heliologue, who is himself following Jason at Negro, Please, I will also make a move to read 52 books in 52 weeks and review them. It will be monstrous but I admit that I will enjoy it. Plus, it will - or at least should - motivate me to keep the site updated frequently with my musings. [...]
no need to study the philosophy of the Matrix, it can all be summed up in one concise story:
Plato’s Parable of the Cave (Also known as the Allegory of the Cave)
That’s it and that’s all. Though, that paved the way for many future philosophic/psychoanalytic theories—Like Althusser’s Ideolgical States and Ideological State Apparatusses, or Lacan’s “Mirror Stage as a Formative Function of the I”
If that were true, the series wouldn’t have been as bad as it was. The problem was, they started with Plato’s cave allegory, but then threw in an omnium gatherum of other, unrelated philosophies.
The problem with the philosophy of the Matrix is that not everyone is a raging pothead and therefore won’t find it so mind blowing.
“Like, what if the world we think we see… [dramatic pause] isn’t there?”
“Dude, that’s deep.”
i always thought the “deeper” philosophy of the matrix were the moral implications of artificial intelligence.
if you create self-aware, free-will beings such as the computer programs, beings that can see the wrongness/rightness of their actions (think the program at the train station who makes sacrifices for his daughter-program in order to give her a better “life”/existence), then this “artificial” intelligence would have the same moral value as a human being. that’s why the movies had to end with the “copout” resolution of peace. for either side, humans or machines,to wipe out the other would be to commit genocide in a sense. to create artificial intelligence—truly self-aware artificial intelligence—would be to create something on an equal metaphysical plane of existence with ourselves.
would we be gods? perhaps.
and if that’s true, kind of gives you a whole new perspective on what happens after death. pull the plug on a “computer program,” and we all know it ceases to be. pull the plug on a human? philosophers and theologians have been guessing at that for… well, forever.